THE STEADFAST HEART
pened—everything—until you found yourself in jail here. Can you do that?”
Angus began, speaking slowly and without emotion. He described preparing the evening meal, the coming of his father, the sordid tragedy of the black pills, his father’s desertion. As he proceeded, as his dormant brain commenced to function under the stimulus of necessity, his face became almost animated; emotions were born…. It was a transformation. He pictured in the simple, graphic words of childhood the effects of the drug upon his mother, even quoting a snatch of the song which had contributed to his terror. So vivid became his recollection of the strangling fear of that dreadful night, that stark terror was mirrored on his face for the convincing of all beholders. Here was no acting, no lying, but a bare, visible human emotion. He cowered, his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper as he repeated his mother’s tales of crime…. The jury leaned forward, ears cupped in hands, held by the boy, fascinated, gripped in the inexorable flow of the tale he told, moved by the truth, the terrible, recognizable truth of the words which described the tragedy of that one day in his life…. Now he began to describe how he had taken down his father’s rifle and trained it upon the door.
“Then,” he said hoarsely, “we heard a hoss
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